


Eclipsed

by MissSpock



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arranged Marriage, Catharsis, Childhood Friends, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Fusion of Seven route and Jumin route, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, MC grew up with V and Jumin and is also coincidentally an Heiress, Marriage Contracts, Multi, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Unrequited Love, cause all of them kdrama tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 04:04:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15525663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissSpock/pseuds/MissSpock
Summary: She stands beside Jumin, watches as their suns are eclipsed and the darkness is all they see. From a distance, Rika looks beautiful.(Too beautiful.)





	Eclipsed

**Author's Note:**

> Long story short, I got rejected by A Boi in April and bc fanfic is therapy i hECKIN PROJECTED
> 
> And then like two days ago I went out for froyo with @RockinDragonz and screamed about this fic for a bit, came home, decided "eh better edit this" and ended up with like?? A solid 2000+ more words? 
> 
> trends continued: not using the words "MC" in the entire story and not referring to MC by name even tho it's third person. Mentioning other RFA members super sporadically for no reason. Abuse of parenthesis privilege.
> 
> Not rly an xRead but how else do you write mysme fics??

When she gets there, he’s already sitting at the bar.

  
The bartender catches her eye. They look at each other briefly, in understanding.

  
She sighs briskly as she crosses the room.

  
“Jaehee told me she couldn’t find you anywhere.”

  
Jumin grunts in acknowledgement and barely looks up. He stares at his liquor instead – whisky, she notices, a drink that his father prefers – and his gaze falls, dull and dark on the glass.

  
“I’ll have whatever he’s having,” she says, light and smiling, to the bartender, then turns back to him. “She says you ditched your body guards at the pet store. Impressively rebellious feat, for our stick-in-the-mud Jumin. I had to get Seven to track you down through the cameras.” Her purse goes on the floor and she settles herself fully into the plush stool, propping her elbows up on the counter. “And you’ve missed all your afternoon meetings, so Chairman Han will be furious.”

  
“Why are you here?” Jumin interrupts. It’s more of a statement than a question.

  
A moment passes. Then, she leans back and folds her arms. “The same reason you are, I suppose.”

  
Jumin looks at her then – really looks at her. In a way they’re both looking for things to fill the time – to fill the silence.

  
She offers him the same smile she’d offered to the waiter, perhaps sadder than she intends. With Jumin Han, it’s push and pull. He’s a relentless businessman even in this - the delicate balance, a scar for a scar. She has to pay in her own vulnerabilities if she’s to have any chance at seeing his.

  
“So,” he says, finally. “You’ve also…”

  
“Received an invitation?” She unzips her purse and takes out the letter, gold calligraphy shining on the surface of thick cardstock. “Yes.”

  
In retrospect it’s no surprise that their invitations come in the mail at the exact same time. They live houses apart, have done so for years. It’s also no surprise that the invitation is coming – only, now that they have it in writing, the whole thing seems much more real, doesn’t it?

  
Jumin’s gaze meets hers and she can read the worry there even though his expression hasn’t changed – and the bartender sets down her drink in front of her, so she smiles again, a touch more practiced this time, and wraps her hands around the glass. “If we get completely smashed, will you take me home? Some people aren’t ridiculous enough to have their own driver.”

  
He rolls his eyes at her, but his tone is more gentle than usual. “How are you?”

  
She considers for a measured amount of time. Then, she answers simply, flippantly, “Fine.”

  
Jumin doesn’t look convinced – they’ve known each other too long for that, and she knows, deep down, that he’s not fine either - so she winks and lifts her glass, pressing it to her lips.

  
The alcohol burns on its way down as she tosses it back.

  
“Better,” She presses the back of her hand to her mouth, and then lifts her wrists to wipe at her eyes decisively, taking a deep breath.

  
And Jumin – Jumin looks at her like he knows.

  
In the dimly lit bar with the din of noises and the soft music playing over the speakers, they can almost pretend the tear tracks on the backs of their hands are from the alcohol.

 

*

  
It’s a fucked-up world that they live in.

  
From the moment they meet each other, there are expectations. Between stage-whispers and contrived media ambushes, it’s very clear what the adults want to happen. Chairman Han’s greatest wish is that one day Jumin will get it in his head to propose to her, and thus marry the two biggest corporations in Korea. Underlying any other marriage scheme he has arranged for his son in the past is that possibility, the tantalizing offer of freedom.

  
They aren’t all too resistant to the idea as children - after all, they’re the best of friends and marriage is just a piece of paper, a legal formality to be completed. Why not tie themselves to each other instead of complete strangers?

  
It’s before they meet Jihyun Kim, of course. It’s before they meet the golden-haired girl that he brings into their lives, too. His sun, he calls her, a smile on his face. The only light in his life.

  
She stands beside Jumin, watches as their suns are eclipsed and the darkness is all they see. From a distance, Rika looks beautiful.

  
(Too beautiful.)

  
Now, though, they look at each other in the backseat of the car, silent, contemplating. The divider is up, of course. Even if Driver Kim sees – well, he manages to stay on this long because he doesn’t talk.

  
“Should we?” Jumin asks, plainly, like he’s asking her if she wants coffee. From his tone, she can already tell, the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that is most likely not but still could be the alcohol. She smiles and pretends it’s the alcohol, on some form of false hope.

  
“No harm in trying.”

  
Jumin leans over, tentative and gentler than he should have been with how much whiskey he’s put away that night, and cups her face. He stares at her for a moment, just a moment, and then he kisses her.

  
When he pulls away, she bursts into tears and laughter. He laughs too.

  
“We would’ve been shit lovers,” She declares.

  
He, smiling though his cheeks are also wet – that is something she hasn’t seen yet in all these years, Jumin Han crying – agrees.

 

*

  
Jihyun asks her lightly, if she’ll come to his suit fitting.

  
“If I could’ve had a maid of honor, it would’ve been you,” he says, in that soft, serious way he always does and smiles at her.

  
She is drawn to him the way sunflowers are to light. And she says yes, of course. Always yes. He looks beautiful in white and she folds his pale blue pocket square, tucks it into his suit and closes her eyes.

  
She pretends. These days, all she can do is pretend.

 

*

 

Jumin gets home from his fitting to find her raiding his kitchen, her dress in its bag draped over the back of a chair. It’s light yellow, and bulbous – she reckons it makes her look a bit like a cake. Jumin’s suit is periwinkle. They’ll match the décor and the bouquet – daffodils and forget-me-nots. Jaehee gives the two of them a knowing look, and leaves them be for the night, even though Jumin has business to attend.

  
She makes a note to send the other woman a fruit basket.

  
Elizabeth the Third purrs from the couch, so Jumin picks up the most important cat in the universe. He hands Elizabeth to her wordlessly.

  
Her heart warms in inches.

  
They may have always made for terrible lovers, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love each other. Perhaps they will remain unloved by the people they want – but they can have this, will have at least this, so they dig out the penthouse’s frankly ridiculous collection of dramas and drink all of Jumin’s wine. Elizabeth is purring, always purring, between them.

  
She finds a certain comfort in the formula of dramas. It’s predictable, predestined. Love prevails, through pain, through hurt, through death sometimes.   
For the plucky young girl at the cusp of a romance, the drama is a reflection. For her, tired and battered as she is, disguised in makeup and clothes and deceitful smiles, it’s a condemnation.

  
Funny how it works out that she’s the second lead in her own story.

 

*

  
  
What if you love someone, but all that love does is brings you pain?

  
She looks at Jihyun and she thinks the hurt melts away – but it doesn’t, not really.

  
So what if it all goes sour one day? What if – one day, she repeats to herself, not now, _of course not now_ , but one day – she starts to hate him? 

  
She wants him to be happy, now, at this moment in time, would do anything to make him happy. She thinks she can live with it – with daffodils and forget-me-nots, with the way his eyes crinkle when he looks at a girl who is warm, warm like summer.

  
(Her fingers dig into her palms, cold and shaking even as she smiles, smiles, smiles. She prays that her heart will always stay this kind.)

  
But summer never lasts long.

 

*

 

  
Rika - dies.

  
Jumin falls apart. The RFA mourns.

  
She goes to see Jihyun in the hospital, if only to get rid of the image in her mind of the blood on his face. He’s sitting by the open window. There’s a dead leaf in his hair, and fresh gauze taped from his forehead to his cheek.

  
When she calls his name, he doesn’t meet her gaze. His good eye is empty, glazed over. More like a glass than eyes.

  
Tension curls in her stomach, grabs hold of fistfuls of air and pulls. Her fingers tremble when they curl carefully around the frame at the foot of the hospital bed, knuckles white when she clutches to the metal bar like it’s the only thing that tethers her to the earth.

  
“Your eye.” She begins. Stops. Starts again. “They said…the doctors said it was trauma.”

  
Jihyun turns to regard her.

  
His face is sterile, blank. Here, in this stark gray room with cool autumn light striking the floor through the window and antiseptic stinging at her nose, it’s like she is facing a stranger.

  
She swallows because she has to try, nevertheless.

  
“Jihyun,” her voice is soft, as soft as his once was. “Jihyun, did Rika – “

  
“Get out,” his voice is even – emotionless.

  
She recoils as if she has been slapped, ashamed and horrified that she can even have dared to suspect the woman he loves – who must have loved him, more whole and fierce, than she can ever have. An apology falls from her lips even as tears spring from her eyes and she scurries past the nurse coming in to check on him, ducks down the hall and out of sight.

  
She presses her back to the wall then, and sinks down to press her face into her knees. She doesn’t say it to hurt him. She never means to hurt him. She doesn’t hate him – it hasn’t come to that day, not yet,  _not yet, please_.

  
(Maybe her heart isn’t so kind after all.)

 

*

 

After the funeral, Jihyun disappears.

  
Yoosung maintains that it must have been because he felt guilty. Zen bristles on Jihyun’s behalf but stops, unsure. Jaehee ignores their bickering and softly tells her Jumin’s taken on the majority of the department’s tasks. That he doesn’t eat, hardly sleeps, speaks to no one unless spoken to.

  
She wants to scream but she doesn’t. She has lost, perhaps – but Jumin has lost more.

  
In the morning she goes to her office, the one she never uses. The one that’s really only for show. She glances at it, at the life she escapes from that she imagines Jumin must live. She glimpses her father before she leaves, smiles tightly at him, and makes a choice.

  
When the car arrives at Jumin’s penthouse, it is dark.

  
He’s drunk. She’s drunk, too. They are both sinners in the aftermath, a man who covets his brother’s wife and a woman who accuses a saint. Both hold the shards of their hearts in their hands, count the cracks with the passage of time.

  
Their tumble between thousand thread count sheers – hurts. They make perfect bedfellows nevertheless.

  
It’s their punishment, after all.

 

*

  
  
“This is the third article I’ve had to wipe from existence in a week,” Seven rarely gets the chance to lounge. He is usually curled up or wound tight, ready to spring into action at the slightest action or word – but now he’s sprawled out across the chairs like a cat, ignoring the dirty looks the people in the café are giving him.

  
Her nail smooths over her photo. Candid, but framed just right, even in the dark. The lights of the car illuminate parts of her face. Recognizable – well, to strangers, maybe. She sees the lines on her face, the downward dip of her shoulders, does not see herself in the frightfully pale, harassed-looking young woman with empty eyes.

  
In the second photo, Driver Kim’s shoulder is already blocking half of her face. She has to admire the camera-work, at least.

  
“It’s a dangerous game you’re playing,” He says, watching her.

  
Luciel is always watching, she thinks.

  
“I know,” is what she says.

  
There is sympathy in his eyes as he presses on. “This isn’t good for you.” Luciel pauses, light bouncing off his glasses. “Or him.”

  
And she wants to jab at him – wants to take hold of him and tear – he can fuck off, go back to making the inane jokes that drives the rest of them insane, where was he when Rika, precious Rika decided to –

  
(But Rika is precious to them all, she knows. She knows this as intimately as she knows the gaping hole in her chest, the darkness at the center of a sunflower.)  
So instead she looks him in the eye.

  
“I know,” she repeats.

 

*

  
  
Time passes. Seasons change.

  
(Jihyun sends them postcards, signs them “V.” He logs in to the messenger sometimes, helps them plan some parties, but still – she never says anything.)

 

*

  
  
  
“I have a proposition for you.”

  
She has known him since childhood, can categorize every expression he makes into a Jumin Han Emotion. But his eyes – his eyes are never warm, except on the days when Elizabeth the Third burrows between the sheets in the morning, content to purr in the light. She finds that she knows him less the more she learns, and it catches her off guard.

  
He puts the document down in front of her, half filled out.

  
She glances at it, and her eyebrow ascends.

  
“It makes sense,” he doesn’t look at her. “It’s what our parents want.” His fingers are tight against his cufflinks. “It’s what I want.”

  
She looks at the document, and then at him, and then jumps back from the table like it physically repels her. Imagines the way he used to look, awestruck and blinded at a girl with a lithe smile and golden hair. Sees the way he looks at her now.

  
“Bull _shit_.”

  
Her jacket is on the couch where she left it the day before, so she snatches it up and steps into her shoes and slams the door with as much vehemence as she can muster.

 

*

  
They don’t talk, after that.

  
Jaehee takes her to a corner café in the city every Tuesday on her lunch break. It is unclear if Jaehee specifically clears her work schedule around this meeting or if Jumin knows and is purposely letting her off.

  
It’s nice, not to feel like she’s drowning, tucked into a cozy seat with some overly sweet, spiced latte. Jaehee updates her on Zen’s musicals, on his quick rise to even more fame. Grief, it seems, makes them all work harder and harder. She doodles on napkins and the back of receipts because she can’t bring herself to pick up a paintbrush in the time she spends at home.

  
(She meets Jihyun in art school. He takes photos of flowers from the same direction she’s painting them on her easel. He admires the way she captures the light and she admires how he makes the most insignificant of things appear special. He laughed, then, and pushed his camera into her hands for her to ry.)

  
Once, Jaehee brings her the contract.

  
His handwriting is pristine and heavy. The stack of pages is carefully preserved, no crease or crinkle to be seen.

  
“Mr. Han cares about you, you know.” Jaehee adjusts her glasses and dips down to sip her coffee. She has no expectations, not like Chairman Han or her own parents. She is only worried – like a friend should be – for the two of them. “Of course, I do not advise you to settle. But – we don’t always get what we want in this world. I just want you to be comfortable, enough happy.”

  
So she – considers.

  
Jaehee excuses herself at the end of lunch. There are errands she has to run to other companies today.

  
Her mother calls from a hotel in Eastern Europe to tell her she’s having the time of her life. Her father is out again on business. Jihyun is somewhere at the edges of the world, only word of him scrawled hastily onto the back of photographs. She thinks of the way she looks at him, once, through the lens of a camera.

  
It’s a large and uncontainable feeling.

  
She is horribly free in this world – nothing to hold her, no one she owes. The edges of herself blurring into the universe, threatening to shake apart the second she releases the grip she has on herself.

 

What does she choose, for herself? What will make her - happy?

  
And so, between descriptions of the caviar and the snow, she picks up a pen, and with it, loosens her fingers, lets go one at a time.

  
Her coffee goes cold that day. The sun sets and she is still sitting in front of the café’s glass windows, staring out into the lights of the city, chest warm with defiance.

 

*

 

  
Jumin’s eyes are on her immediately as he steps into the room. He looks haggard, suit crinkling at the elbows, a crease at his forehead, but his eyes are bright. It has been A Day in the life of Jumin Han.

  
“They let me in,” she says by way of explanation. An unfathomable part of her wants to reach for him, to smooth the lines from his face. “I’m sorry about the hour but I haven’t seen you in weeks and – “

  
“You’re beautiful,” he cuts her off softly.

  
She smiles – tears are glittering in her eyes, and his are not soft, not yet, but she smiles, dammit, and lifts her hand off of her lap – “I’ve made my decision.”

 

*

  
  


“I…we’re getting married,” She says to him after the party, years later after the last time they actually speak to each other in that hospital room, so long ago. The words feel strange in her mouth – much like they felt strange in her ears once, when he had been the one saying it.

  
Jihyun turns toward her with the barest hint of surprise. He takes the invitation, turns it over again and again in his hands as if he can’t quite believe it.

  
“Jumin and I,” she clarifies, “Signed the contract. The one that’s been drawn up since we were all kids.” A laugh, desperate and terrified, forces its way past her lips. “His father wants him to marry Sarah Choi. This is the only way.”

  
He opens his mouth – and though she feels the weight of the guilt, she wishes, just a little, that he would stop her, would care enough to ask, at the very least. But instead, he looks at her through the dark lens of his glasses with the same unreadable, beautiful eyes and says – “Congratulations.”

  
He turns to her, and for once, she lets the tears run tracks down her cheek while he is still watching.

  
“I mean it,” Jihyun steps toward her, and places his hand, comforting and warm, on the top of her head. His smile is gentle, and perhaps a touch sad. “You two deserve to be happy.”

  
He ruffles her hair, and then he’s gone. She watches him as he disappears down the hall, into the shadows.

  
His back will always be turned to her. That much, she knows now.

 

*

  
  
The ceremony is exactly how their parents always dreamed it would be. Her dress will be plastered over every magazine in the next few weeks, and the prices of the stocks for both their companies skyrocket. Jumin gives her his mother’s ring, much to the distaste of Chairman Han’s current fling.

  
She makes sure to gesture excessively with her left hand whenever she’s forced to make contact with Glam Choi. It wards her off, and that wards Chairman Han off, and she is allowed to refrain from family politics for a while longer at least.

  
“He doesn’t deserve you,” Zen says, and shoots a glare toward the man at her side.

  
“I suppose you’ll be in the tabloids much more now,” Yoosung scratches the back of his neck.

  
“Hey,” Seven winks and finger-guns. “At least I won’t have to pull them as much, eh? Let me see Elly some time, I’m starting to miss her.”

  
Jaehee embraces her, teary, and thanks her for relieving her of the burden of cat-sitting.

  
Her hands are cold but her heart is warm. She thanks her friends, her new husband’s arm around her waist a secure tether to the present, to reality, to the world she lives in now.

  
When he steps in front of them, Jihyun leans in to kiss her cheek. She smiles at him, as bright and beautiful as she always has been. She is the sun now. She is the light, fierce and burning. She will be eclipsed no longer.

 

“You deserve to be happy too,” she tells him, parrots his own words. “Don’t you ever forget that.”

  
Much later, after the guests have gone and arrangements made, and they’re safely delivered to Chairman Han’s villa, when they’re alone, Jumin asks, quietly, “Do you regret it?”

  
“Do you?”

  
He says, austere as he always is. “No.”

  
Something hidden flickers in his eyes – a secret she doesn’t know yet.

  
“I choose you,” She decides, finally. It is what’s true – there is only ever the truth between them. Nothing more, nothing less, for now. For now, it is all she as to offer.

  
He kisses her cheek like he understands, and they fall asleep the way they used to as children, curled into each other’s side under the covers.

 

 

*

  
  
She does live - happily.

 

The world Jumin is a part of is one she has grown up in, can easily acclimatize to. She acts the part for their friends and family, the power-hungry businessmen who always seem to be in the vicinity, and of course, the media that's taken to dubbing them the financial power-couple of the century. 

  
Between themselves, however, marriage is not without its frustrations. There are days when she thinks she may be  _something_ , watching him make pancakes, tousled and half awake, Elizabeth perched on the counter - but then shoves down the traitorous thought before he turns to catch her. They have little arguments about everything and it descends into ugly chaos. He always apologizes before they settle in for the night, presses a kiss to her temple like a real husband does a real wife. When he looks at her there is something in his eyes that she frantically ignores, pushing down on the familiar feeling in her stomach.

 

( _I choose you,_  she repeats in her head on those nights. Still, still, still, it is all she can give.)

 

When she hears about Jihyun and Rika, in the aftermath, it comes as a surprise. Of course, it comes as a surprise. She holds it together through the funeral for Luciel - Saeyoung, now - and the pale young man at his side, rages and seethes to Jumin in private at the fact that Jihyun's family couldn't even bother to come. 

  
They fight when he tells her they sent the Savior off to rehabilitation. 

  
(Rika’s ghost stands over her shoulder, grinning like the cat that got the cream. Jihyun is dead - wonderful, kind, beautiful Jihyun, who, in spite of all of it, takes beautiful photographs and smiled like the sun was in his eyes.)

  
They say things to each other they will come to wish they hadn’t but he comes after her when she flees out onto the balcony, out into the rain, artfully blank mask never faltering. She rages and cries and says  _“don’t touch me leave me alone”_  and doesn’t quite mean it, and he knows she doesn’t mean it, so he’s still standing there, in the rain, soaked through when she buries her face in his shoulder and trembles.

  
(He holds her then, and it feels a little less like punishment. She says  _“thank you,”_  and he says  _“I think I might be in love you”_  and for the first time it doesn't hurt, doesn't feel like she's using him, doesn't feel like a consolation prize. It doesn't seem real, not just yet, but it will be,  _it will be_.)

  
In the shadows, Rika’s ghost hisses. She gives it the finger and holds on tighter, twisting her hands into his grey Armani jacket, and falls asleep there, clinging to his arms.

 

*

 

He is still there - beside her, achingly familiar in the routine they've come into over the years - in the early, early morning when she blinks awake, and she finds out that she's decided. Crawls out of bed as quietly as possible. Boxes up old paintings and photographs, tucks strings of flower petals between the pages. 

 

 _He loved you, and I loved him,_ she thinks to the skeletons in the closet, the shadows in the corner, the ghost that looms overhead.  _But we are here. We are alive - and you are gone. I will not stop living for you._

 

And she thinks, as the floorboards creak and the branches rustle, dancing against the window, she can almost feel phantom fingers, running through her hair, hear familiar laughter on the wind.

 

(Someone tells her once, that she deserves to be happy.)

 

 _Yes_ , she smiles to no one in particular,  _I do_. 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Pls leave me a comment. Pls. It waters my crops and clears my skin.  
> VALIDATE MEHHHHH


End file.
